The invention relates to the management of components of a network in an aircraft. In particular, the invention relates to a network management system for an aircraft; a method for the management and maintenance of a network in an aircraft; an aircraft comprising such a network management system; and the use of a network management system in an aircraft.
Electronic systems in aircraft need to meet particularly high safety requirements. For example, if malfunctions or failures of various components of the network occur in a network, a central system should ensure that ramifications to the remaining components of the network or beyond it to the aircraft are kept to the minimum possible.
In order to meet the safety criteria also in relation to system components of the aircraft, or in order to subject these components to these safety standards, these commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS, commercial products) products or external components need to be equipped with software that needs to be defined by the aircraft manufacturer.
In this context, hitherto-known solutions use non-standardised communication protocols and transmission protocols in order to monitor components in a network of an aircraft, and in order to react to failure messages.
In order to be able to ensure at any point in time during a flight that full functionality of all the components is provided, special test equipment is integrated in the aircraft in order to be able to carry out special tests on the components of the network.
Furthermore up to now it is a typical procedure that each single failure message of any component of an electronical aircraft system is instantly and on a direct physical way reported to a central system. This uncontrolled failure reportage may not be based on a central failure request. This may lead to disadvantageous, extensively large and temporally unbunched dataflow within the aircraft.